All posts tagged ‘router’

For nearly a decade I have been holding onto my ancient WRT54G simply because it runs an open source firmware called Tomato and offers me a few simple yet powerful features. Even after testing a speedy Belkin router earlier this year I demoted it to the role of access point and put the WRT back in front.

So when Asus contacted me about testing out their RT-N66U router I couldn’t refuse. The promise of a modern radio with the power of an open source firmware was an offer I couldn’t refuse. The router promises speeds up to 450 Mbps on 802.11n with the flexibility of the open source firmware packages that I have been using.

This was definitely the easiest router I’ve set up. I plugged it in, connected to the unsecured WiFi it provided and followed the “Quick Internet Setup” link on the web user interface. Total time from plugging it in to securing the WiFi was under 5 minutes. I cheated and used my previous SID and WPA2 key so none of our 20-some devices had to be reconfigured.

For some time now my Internet access has been held hostage by an old 802.11g WiFi router. I have cable Internet with some blazing download and upload speed averages, but the only computer in the house that has been able to take advantage of that is the sole Windows 7 desktop PC in my upstairs office. My wife’s downstairs laptop, both of our iPads (hers the iPad 2 and mine the iPad 3 — sorry, Apple, that’s what I’m calling it), and my MacBook Air all have had to deal with 802.11g speeds when in fact both iPads and the Air are capable of using the 802.11n protocol. Given my fast cable Internet access, the bottleneck is most definitely the WiFi signal — with a maximum 54Mbps bandwidth, the old 802.11g router has had its day and served me well… but the old must make way for the new.

Enter the TP-Link TL-WR842ND — with a maximum 300Mbps bandwidth, that’s almost 6x faster than the old router. Even if I’m only getting half of that speed with the new router, that’s still triple the throughput. And the 842 has many more benefits.

I’ve been using a Linksys WRT54GS since they were released in 2004. The speed was sufficient for my home network needs and, with a couple high gain antennas, the wireless coverage was exceptional. I tried a few different firmware versions, but settled on Tomato. It was both very flexible and easy to use, and allowed me to “ground” the kids from the internet with the click of a button.

I wasn’t really planning on upgrading when Belkin contacted me about testing out their N900 router, but I had noticed more connection and bandwidth issues as we added devices to our network. Last count we had 14 wireless devices between computers, phones, and tablets.

The Belkin N900 router sports a rather large laundry list of advanced features, including one they call Multibeam Technology. While they call it exclusive, it sounds a lot like the Beamforming technology used by the Ruckus APs we have at work. The difference is that the N900 comes in at less than half the price of the cheapest Ruckus.

The N900 also boasts dual band connections using both 2.4 and 5Ghz if your devices supports it (none of my appear to), and Intellistream which is just a fancy name for Quality of Service. It puts a priority on steaming media and gaming packets and my initial tests show that it allows both of those packet types to compete with a high speed torrent download with fewer hiccups than my WRT could.

Back in January when I attended CES in Las Vegas, I was quite surprised to discover that my hotel room (in a very well known hotel, too) didn’t offer WiFi Internet, only a standard Ethernet cable snaking out of the wall. To get WiFi I had to take the elevator down 19 floors, walk through the large casino to the opposite side of the hotel, go up an escalator, walk through a small mall-like retail area, and into the McDonald’s restaurant that offered free WiFi with a purchase.

So why didn’t I use the in-room Ethernet cable? Simple — I have a MacBook Air that has no Ethernet port. It’s a WiFi-only device, as is my iPad. My phone does offer HotSpot capability, but the upload speeds are atrocious and I really didn’t feel like wiping out my data plan over a two-day period. So I sucked it up, made the walk to McDonald’s numerous times (as well as taking advantage of the free WiFi at the CES event with my iPad), and enjoyed their WiFi — thanks, Ronald!

After getting home, I made up my mind to find a solution for this problem so that any future travel wouldn’t have my MacBook Air or iPad sitting around as dead weight if I couldn’t find a WiFi connection. My only real expectations for whatever solution I could find was that it would offer WiFi to more than one device at a time and that it have a small footprint and a tiny bit of weight — I moved to the Air because of its light weight, and when I’ve got both iPad (1.5lbs)and Air (3lbs)in the carrying case, I’m still only carrying about 6 pounds or so on my shoulder.

The de facto punishment when I was a kid was a spanking, but for severe infractions, where that wasn’t enough, a week of being grounded or weekend of hard labor often followed.

With my own kids we’ve gravitated toward grounding as the effective punishment of choice. Not always the full grounded, can’t go anywhere, do anything, kind of my childhood, but a restriction of the privileges. Especially the privileges that are most valued like the cell phone, laptop, Nintendo DS and web access.

Our geeklets attend school online during the day, so a complete ban on internet access isn’t possible, but thanks to its access restrictions settings, our router comes to the rescue. As of this week, one of the laptops in the house can only access the internet from 8am to 8pm. We’ve been honest about the hourly restrictions, but haven’t yet fessed up to why a certain website fails to load from our house. Maybe I’ll just blame it on karma: “The internet knows when you’ve been bad and punishes you accordingly.”

For those interested, I’m using an aging, but reliable, Linksys WRT54G Router with the Tomato Firmware. There are about half a dozen open source alternatives to the Linksys firmware, and a few of them have useful access restriction settings.

In this case the punishment is for surfing foopets and youtube after being told to go to bed. How would you handle this form of misbehavior?